Minnesota native Paige Bueckers brought it home. It’s the UConn Huskies’ 12th NCAA tournament win, and it concludes a dominant season: 37-3 overall and an 18-0 sweep of the Big East, including their fifth-straight Big East Championship.
USC (from California) couldn’t put up the Elite Eight fight they needed without perhaps the brightest star of the season in JuJu Watkins, who tore her ACL in the second round — yet they still gave UConn the hardest fight they’d see all tournament (78- 64). The easiest fight? Sorry, Arkansas State Red Wolves; 103-34 is tough.
The Huskies dogged UCLA out of the Final Four, winning the game handily 85-51. And South Carolina’s offense never got off the ground for a finals showing, flailing in the Huskies’ 82-59 wake.
Those are 34- and 23-point wins.
Before Watkins’ ACL tear, she was the heiress-apparent to Caitlin Clark as the face of women’s college basketball. With her out early, Bueckers was the story of the tournament. She would have been a legend with or without the title, but with her own career bracketing a March injury sophomore year, followed by an ACL tear of her own over the summer, the win feels especially deserved.
The UConn v. USC (from Carolina) championship game should have been the prizefight. UConn, the most dominant team in women’s college basketball history (the owners of a repeat, three-peat and four-peat since 2002) against South Carolina, the most dominant team since the Huskies’ previous championship (titles in 2017, 2022 and 2024).
The defending champion Gamecocks had the chance to claim a repeat of their own. They came close in 2023 but fell to Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes in the Final Four. With that demon slayed last season, the red carpet seemed as though it had unfurled itself for South Carolina. Like the Huskies, they crushed their first-round opponent. Tennessee Tech drowned in a 108-48 bloodbath. The next few rounds were a little closer, culminating with a four-point victory over Duke in the Elite Eight that necessitated a 16-8 fourth quarter to keep the dream alive for South Carolina.
Coach Dawn Staley had a deep bench to play with, one strong enough to squash Texas 74-57. But UConn brought star power with the trio of Bueckers, Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong, and Staley never found a lineup with any teeth when it came against the Huskies.
Staley’s finals faceoff with longtime UConn coach Geno Auriemma was as dramatic as Bueckers’ title win: truly two of the greatest to ever do it. Their championship game records going into the finals were 3-0 and 11-1, over 18 and 40 seasons. They’ve dominated the game, and at 55 and 71 years old, respectively, they’re the past and future of a game that is shining as bright as it ever has.
We didn’t get the USC v. UConn, Watkins v. Bueckers, star v. star matchup we wanted. But we got Bueckers v. Lauren Betts of UCLA and, while favored, South Carolina had to prove themselves against the Longhorns.
The tournament was light on upsets — in another bracket challenge I competed fruitlessly in, the winner was someone who pushed autogenerated top-seeds all the way through. Not such a Mad March in either tournament, to UConn’s great advantage.
•aarmentr@macalester.edu
